Demonstrating that there is some honesty left in American business, the US Department of Defense finds that it is a whopping $1,400m less worse off than it thought it was, according to the US General Accounting Office, which says that Pentagon contractors returned the money over the first nine months of last year, for which they hadn’t asked and weren’t owed: the Office said most overpayments it examined were caused by mistakes made by the Defense Finance & Accounting Service in Columbus, Ohio, and we reckon that Uncle Sam was pretty lucky to get the cash – invoices paid twice, payments made without agreed deductions removed, things like that – since it must have been tempting even for the honest to put the cash into escrow accounts and live on the interest until Uncle Sam asked for it but Senator John Glenn, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee has a nasty thought – How much is owed the government in overpayments that contractors haven’t returned?
